Rolo on Tour

I get a lot of questions like „What was your favourite country/place/thing you did..“.
The thing is, I can’t answer these questions, as I cannot reduce a 1-year-trip to just a simple answer to that. So I decided to choose some categories and then single out the things I remember most within these categories. Let’s begin:

• Country, which has the best food: Mexico for sure
• Best meal I had: Pancakes filled with cheese on a street food stall in León, Nicaragua for around 0,40$ a piece. Delicious!
• Country, which has the friendliest people: Cambodia
• Country, where travelling is easiest: New Zealand
• If god were a men, every country would be like: Argentina (A country where half of the space in restaurants is occupied by a big barbecue, soccer is the national religion and women are beautiful. ;-))
• Most strenuous activity I did: I call it a tie between climbing Volcano Concepción in Nicaragua and climbing Huayna Potosi in Bolivia.
• Best fun sports activity I tried: I guess I have to say Skydiving, although it hurts your budget a bit..
• Biggest surprise: Ending up as a participant of a Waiter’s run in Guatemala
• Best Experience off the beaten track: Doing the Quilotoa Loop in Ecuador. A trek in a beautiful landscape, which is not crowded at all with tourists and where you meet friendly local people in the small villages along the way.
• Places to skip: Cancún, Mexico and Baños, Ecuador; they are way too touristy for my taste
• Best trip: The boat rides from Iquitos into the jungle and from Siem Reap to Battambang
• Worst trip: The 36 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang to Hanoi

Now let’s come to my favourite pictures:

• Category Landscape:

Torres del Paine National Park in Chile

• Category Fun:

Enjoying our time in San José, Costa Rica

• Category People:

Winning Rock Paper Scissors makes the price go up 1 Dollar, the seller is happy!

• Category Kids:

Cambodian kids happy about the entertainment I provided

• Category Sports/Activities:

Having a glance inside Crater of Volcano Concepción in Nicaragua

• Category Creativity:

A nice optical illusion 🙂

• Category Animals:

I know there are a lot of pictures of animals in this blog and it is hard to make a decision. But my choice is the following one:

It looks like he is looking at me, right?

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It is a Saturday night at Bangkok airport, for my inner time clock it is something like 2am after a long flight. It comes to a showdown between me and a policeman at the passport control point. The reason: On the immigration card I had to write the adress of the hotel I was supposed to stay.  But I just wrote „Bangkok“. The conversation went like this:

Policeman: You have to write down where you are going to stay.
Me: But I don’t know that yet. I never make a reservation.
P: Ok, so think about where you want to stay and write that down.
M: I can’t, I don’t know any name of a hotel in Bangkok.
P: So in which area of Bangkok do you want to stay?
M: I don’t know anything about the neighborhoods of Bangkok.
P: How do you want to get to the city from here?
M: I don’t know. I will ask at a tourist information about that.
P: How many days will you be in Bangkok?
M: I don’t know.
P: How much time will you be in Thailand?
M: I don’t know.
P: Where will you go next?
M: I don’t know. Maybe Laos.
P: So you come here and you don’t know anything about Bangkok???
M: Exactly. But I will find out later.

He checks my passport. Oh, this guys has passed a lot of border controls. Maybe he is not crazy.
He lets me through, I walk to a tourist information, ask about a good area with cheap places to stay, they tell me how I get there. I walk around a bit and find a place where I can get my well-deserved sleep. It is so easy.

Of course I could have invented a hostel or faked that I knew exactly what I was going to do. But if I have learned one thing from hollywood movies, than it is that small lies turn into big lies and then you lose the woman of your dreams just to win her back in the last 2 minutes of the movie. That sounds like a lot of trouble so I’ll just stay honest.

I can tell you that I have not always arrived to a new place clueless like I did here. Let’s think back 10 months:
I was on my plane to Mexico. I had searched the Internet for hostels in Cancun and compared them all on Hostelworld. I found „the best one“ and made a reservation there for 2 nights. I paid and printed out a receipt which confirmed that. I printed out directions about how to get to the hostel from the airport. I had a guidebook with me in which I had a map and many information about the area I was flying into.

But with the time it has become very clear to me that I’m better off with the „no plans“-strategy. Plans are changing and the most important thing is to keep your flexibility. Also researching costs a lot of time and effort and you can do all this also when it is actually time to make those decisions.
I found that some things are just not that important, as for example all the hostels and guesthouses will be more or less the same, so why put so much energy in finding „the best one“?

Ok, after this little detour let’s get back to my travels:
Seeing this part of the world for the first time 2 things I noted very quickly. First the people here are so skinny it is really very hard to find a local who has a gram of fat on his/her body.
Second the heat is just killing. It is supposed to be rainy season which means that it should also rain a lot but at the beginning there just was no rain. The average number of showers per day was increasing drastically 😉

As mentioned above I first set foot on Asia in Bangkok. About my time there I can only tell you that what happens in Bangkok, stays in…..

Just kidding. But as I will return to Bangkok later on and don’t want to split the Bangkok time in 2 separate post, I’ll move on to my next stop right now, which was the ancient capital of Thailand named Ayuthaya. Much of it was burned down (as a consequence today the capital is Bangkok), but there are still lots of ruins and temples to see, which are scattered around the city.
So now we can play a little game, which is „Find the Buddha(s)!“

You found them all?

In the north lies the – with travellers quite popular city – Chiang Mai. Their police likes to present themselves in a quite amusing way:

If only that would resemble reality…

After a long time of not doing anything fancy it was time again to raise the adrenaline level. I found out that I could get a really good deal to go bungee jumping (the high price was the reason I did not do that in New Zealand), so I gave it a go.
It does not look too bad when you are watching from below, but when you are up there of course you doubt that it is a good idea to leap forward. The „No refund for non jumpers“-policy though helps to do the decisive step 🙂

Jumping time

Most importantly as a consequence you will smile for the rest of the day :-)!

From there I decided to let my prediction to the policeman come true – and went to Laos. Here the first place I have been to was the quite quiet capital Vientiane. There they built a park with lots of religious statues:

The Buddhapark near Vientiane

To have this point of view you have to crawl into the following thing:

Bigmouth strikes again

After only one night I went to one of the weirdest places I know on this planet: Vang Vieng.
Why? Well, it attracts party people from all over the world to do something called Tubing. The basic idea is a tuk-tuk drives you up the river, you rent a tube and drift all the way back to the village. But in reality for most people it is kind of an excuse to get drunk in the middle of the day. To accomplish that several bars have been built along the river to serve that wish.
I said no thank you to the bars and was just relaxing in the tube, waiting for the current to bring me back. Quite boring, so I wonder how good is this activity if it is only fun being drunk?
One more comment: I hear people say that Tubing is dangerous. Well, that is not true at all. If you are with the tube there is no way you can come anywhere near drowning.
The dangerous thing is that people get totally pissed in the sun and then think they can cross the river swimming to the other side to catch the next bar. Well, some of them just overestimate themselves.

Once the sun is setting people get back to the village and can watch Friends or Family Guy in every restaurant. Apparently someone has decided that these are the best TV shows to watch drunk.

So I went a bit disappointed further to the north to the city of Luang Prabang. Consuming lots of fruitshakes, eating lots of Lao-style sandwiches and grilled fish on the night market I was mainly waiting for my visa to Vietnam. Killing the waiting time I could do some elephant riding – not very comfortable once you remove the saddle. But quite interesting to see how these giants can still maneuver in very hilly and/or muddy areas. And also how much they eat, they hardly take a break of doing that!

Allright guys, I am prepared, hop on!

My heart will go on

Finally I got my visa and could hop onto the bus to Vietnam, which was supposed to be a 24hour-ride.
It took us 36…

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One of the things you have to think about before starting a trip like I do is the question, what medicaments you need to bring. As I had absolutely no experience in travelling I was  looking for advice in the internet and in books and I ended up getting nearly everything I saw recommended. So my medical reservoir looks now like this:

How can I help you?

What I did not think about was the fact, that the people giving these advices may want to be more on the safe side. Also, unless you are spending let’s say 4 weeks in the jungle or in the Himalaya, you will usually be in civilized areas, where you can hardly avoid running into pharmacies. So, if you need something, you can normally just go to the pharmacy and buy it. Also in some countries you can buy the medication per pill, so if you need like let´s say only 2 pills of something, you don´t need to buy the whole package of maybe 20 pills like in Germany.
Concluding you should just take those things with you, that would really improve your well-being that much, when let’s say the next doctor or pharmacy is 1 or 2 days away.
Sorting the stuff I got with me by importance, I arrive at the following recommendations:

1. Imodium: In my opinion the most important thing to bring. Travelling in some not so developed countries at some point you will get food poisoning. And then you don’t want to spend all day on the toilet (especially if you are on a bus ride or hiking in the middle of nowhere), which this will keep you from doing. A must-bring!
2. Ear plugs: Ok they do not quite fit in the category, but I will mention them anyway :-). Sleeping in dorms, you will encounter snorers and in order to get some sleep you will absolutely need earplugs.
3. Wound desinfectant: I do not know how I ended up accidentally bringing two of those bottles. I have used it only once I think, but I guess it’s a good thing to have around.
4. Plasters: They weigh nothing and are absolutely helpful, so take them.
5. Malarone Malaria stand-by medication: Travelling through areas with possible risk of getting Malaria you have to think about how to fight that. One way is taking pills in advance. As there are some severe side effects I decided for the second way consisting in taking some pills with me, which are only to be used in case I get some of the symptoms associated with Malaria and there is no doctor nearby. Good thing my health insurance even paid for those! Anyway, which precautions to be taken for Malaria should be discussed with your doctor in advance.
6. Electrolyte drink: Although it tastes like vomit, this is a helpful thing in case you got diarrhea. Brought a little bit too many of them, though.
7. Paracetamol: Against fever or pain and a thing to bring, I guess. But 20 pills seems too much to me.
8. Fenistil: Helps treating sunburn and easing the itch you get from mosquito bites. I’m glad I have it with me.
9. Hametum topical: Helps healing some minor wounds.
10. Tape: Can be useful in lots of ways.
11. ACC Akut: Dissolve those and drink it in case you got cough. It also really tastes good 🙂
12. Lemocin: Against a sore throat and also really tasty.
13. I don’t know the english word, but it’s something to put on wounds. As it does hardly add any weight, take it.
14. Sagrotan Hand antiseptic: No weight and maybe there might me a situation where you are glad to have them. I have not been in that situation so far though. Also in case my hands are that dirty and I want to use the antiseptic I would need to search my bagpack before with those hands, which may not be the best idea anyway..
15. Some bag to put all those stuff in.
16. A list describing the content of the bag and explanations about when to use what thing in 3 languages. As I brought some stuff I had no idea what it was for I needed to remind myself in case I lost the package insert.
17. Ear drops: Buy them in case you need them (or if you go diving a lot maybe), but don’t bring them in advance, as you will probably not need them. As well, in case you do and there is no pharmacy it will not get that bad.
18. Eye drops: No sense in bringing them in my opinion, unless you often have problems with your eyes.
19. Anti-allergy pills: Dito, unless you often have problems with allergies.
20. Cream against fungal skin disorder: I read that I should bring it and that’s why I did. But again applying the same reasoning I don’t see the necessity.
21. Pills against sea sickness: Unless you start your trip with a 4-week-ferry ride, you don´t want to bring them in advance but rather think about purchasing them before you get on a boat. I bought mine before going on the ship to Puerto Natales. They also can help you sleep 😉
22. Pills against altitude sickness: You are flying from sea level into La Paz? Ok, buy them in advance. If not, think about when it really could be necessary. For example I bought mine before climbing up to 6000 metres.

Concluding, I think that Numbers 1-7 and 15 are necessary, Numbers 8-14 and 16 are helpful and the other ones are superfluous. So if I went again on a trip like this, I would bring that stuff:

My recommendation

Of course what you should as well do is consult some doctor with knowledge in that area about the question which vaccinations you need. And you should do that in time (let’s say 6 months before takeoff), as some of those need several shots. For example I got vaccinations against yellow fever, typhoid fever, Hepatitis and rabies.

Also think about additional health insurance, as normally your regular health insurance will not cover any costs abroad. Sure you can take all these meds with you, but if really something severe happens, they will not help you and in that case I am sure you don’t want to take the costs!

And finally I am not a doctor, so don’t nail me on anything I said. If you are one and see some flaws in my writing please correct me!

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There is a lot of time to kill while travelling, especially considering all those long bus rides. So reading books is a very good thing. But there is a problem: You don’t want to carry around all those books you read and also you don’t want to buy new books all the time. So book exchanges are the perfect solution. You can find those in many hostels (in book shops you normally can´t really make a good deal exchanging!) and the idea is simple: You just exchange a book you already read for one you still want to read. Of course often you have to take what there is to offer (hoping to find a specific book in a book exchange is a long shot) but as you never know how it will be before it does not matter that much I think. Be careful though: A quick look if the book is complete can be useful or you end up getting a book like that one:

Bad Luck starting a book on page 209

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I got this question a lot during the last time – by people who probably don´t know much about Germany. Qué tal Alemania? What is Germany like? What do you answer on that? Is it even possible to have a quick answer on such a question? How do you describe your country in 3 sentences? When I ask other people about it, they usually name „German beer, Sauerkraut, soccer and Rammstein“. Interesting image we got!

But what would you mention first? There is so many aspects in describing the life in a country:

• How the landscape looks like: How high are our mountains, do we have beaches, deserts, national parks?
• What is the weather like? How warm does it get in summer and how cold in winter? Is there a lot of snow?
• What kind of school system is there? Do you have to pay for school?
• Is there a social security system? Is the economy strong? How much do you earn in average?
• What role does the religion play? Is it considered to be necessary to get married when in a relationship and if yes – at what age is that done in average? How many divorces are there? How many kids do you have on average?
• What role does sports play and which ones are most popular?
• What is typical food and drinks in your country?
• Which political system do you have? Is it democratic? Is there a lot of corruption going on?
• How are people dressed?

The list could be continued. Still which aspects are the most important and how do you explain those to somebody living in some village in Ecuador whose life differs so much in many of those things?

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